Minolta Dimage 7i failure ?

New user here and my first post is a worrying one.
I saved hard to buy my dimage 7i a couple of years ago and im very upset to find its not at all well. Basically, everything looks like it has an ink stain washing down the lens and the overall image is distorted and fuzzy, no adjustment or setting will put it back to normal, is this a major failure ?

Is there any physical stain or any lcd component which is damaged - causing this?
Sounds like sensor damage/failure. Are you seeing this in a preview mode
or when viewing a stored image ? Try a different memory-card to eliminate that posibility from the equation.

dimage7i said:

Hi all,

New user here and my first post is a worrying one.
I saved hard to buy my dimage 7i a couple of years ago and im very upset to find its not at all well. Basically, everything looks like it has an ink stain washing down the lens and the overall image is distorted and fuzzy, no adjustment or setting will put it back to normal, is this a major failure ?

Just thought I would update this:
The fault was from a dodgy batch of ccd's, I had to send the camera back and fill out a form followed by receiving a full refund ! Not bad considering it was way out of warranty.

CCDs have been having a lot of failures lately. I'd say shoot with a CMOS sensor but I think you can only find them on select DSLRs, which would be far better cameras than a DSLR-like P&S but you probably don't want to pay that much.

I assume you dealt with Sony since they took over Minolta's camera division? If so that's good news, reports of customer service often tend to be mixed (and usually people are more likely to tell folks about bad experiences than good ones) so this is encouraging. P.s. I'm not sure about CMOS sensors being inherently less likely to fail. Everyone uses CCDs, even Canon (who use their CMOS in dSLRS) use CCDs in their compact models.

CCDs have been having a lot of failures lately. I'd say shoot with a CMOS sensor but I think you can only find them on select DSLRs, which would be far better cameras than a DSLR-like P&S but you probably don't want to pay that much.

Click to expand...

Depends what your intended use is - won't be able to tell the difference between a high-end "prosumer" & a DSLR in a good-light shot.